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October 2012

This seminar, organised by eremuak, will focus on the legitimisation discourses that inform public policies, to explore questions such as: new institutional frameworks, self-instituting processes, collective practices, definitions of participation in art and society, financing methods and the laws of patronage and heritage policies.

The seminar will take place over two days and is structured around two committees in which a number of different professionals will take part: artists, curators, and art historians. In each session, the debates will be preceded by a talk on the proposed subject.

11 October: We are participating in a colloquium between Basque artists, featuring Nestor Basterretxea and Josu Rekalde, and moderated by Fernando Golvano, in the 1st International Congress on Art, Memory and Democracy.

Conference venuesBilbao and Gernika: 9,10,11th october 2012Elai Alai aretoa Gernika and Auditorium of the University of the Basque Country (Bilbao)

PresentationGreat works of art weave many senses and different aesthetic, ethical and political values into a single form. They set off genuine research into human existence and historical and social events, redefining what is thinkable, visible and experimentable. Picasso’s Guernica, painted in 1937, is a case in point of an artistic creation that brings together all these meanings in an open, critical, enigmatic dialogue. Painted at the time of the Spanish Civil War and commissioned by the government of the Republic for its pavilion at the World’s Fair in Paris, it continues to be ackowledged as a universal symbol denouncing the barbarity of the bombing of civilian populations.

2012 marks the 75th anniversary of its presentation, in the Year of Cultures for Peace and Freedom. This provides an ideal setting for a review of its current significance and ongoing commitment to democratic values. It is also a good time to reflect on the deep-rooted links between creativity, remembrance and the permanent institution of a democratic project in the Basque, European and global contexts in the present time. This congress sets out to discuss these issues from the viewpoints of historical and philosophical clarification and of artistic and literary investigation.